NEWS 

 

 


 

Anti-Obama Forces Unite Behind New Slur

A new right-wing conspiracy has surfaced in this presidential campaign. It's the not-so-subtle effort to replace the N-word with the M-word.  The N-word is an epithet that racists have used for centuries to demean black people.

Muslim redefined


The M-word, for Muslim, is a post-9/11 slur that bigots use to brand someone as a follower of Islam -- which, in their twisted minds, is equivalent to being unpatriotic or even anti-American.

There was a time not too long ago when more than a few politicians openly used the N-word to appeal to the racial fears of whites. Democrats, such as former Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett did it. So did former Louisiana Gov. Huey Long and James Brynes, a former Supreme Court Justice and senator from South Carolina.

As the nation's tolerance for overt displays of racism waned, race-baiting politicians and their supporters used euphemistic talk to generate the same reaction.

That's what happened during the 1988 presidential campaign when Republicans used against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in the case of Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer who tortured and raped a woman after being furloughed from a Masschusetts prison.

The following year, Rudolph Giuliani did a similar verbal dance as a New York City mayoral candidate when he called David Dinkins, his black opponent, a "Jesse Jackson Democrat."

Both were thinly disguised attempts to generate the same reaction that bigoted politicians used to go for in using the N-word.

A few days ago, the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor union, mailed a flier to 600,000 of its members in an effort to dispel the rumor that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is a Muslim. Never mind that the Democratic presidential candidate was for more than two decades a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, there still are a lot of people who think Obama is a Muslim.

Tagging Obama with the M-word is a stealth campaign meant to link him to Osama bin Laden and his terrorist legion.

Deliberate distortion

Rush Limbaugh is one of the few public faces of this deception. The right-wing radio talk show host has repeatedly called the Illinois senator "Barack H-u-s-s-e-i-n Obama." The special emphasis he gives Obama's middle name is a surrogate for the M-word.

For months now, an e-mail has been traveling the Internet with what purports to be an accurate biography of Obama. According to The Washington Post, the e-mail's origins trace back to one of Obama's old political opponents who supports his allegation simply by saying "Obama's father was a Muslim."

Back in June, when Obama and his wife, Michelle, tapped their fists together during a campaign rally, a Fox News anchor questioned whether the action was "A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab?"

To label the gesture -- called a DAP, for dignity and pride -- a fist bump or pound is understandable. But suggesting it was a terrorist fist jab clearly aims to link Obama to the M-word.

As the AFL-CIO's action suggests, all this has had a troubling, lingering effect.

In recent years, presidential elections have been won -- and lost -- on the margins. A shift of just a few percentage points could decide whether Obama or U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will be the next occupant of the Oval Office.

This race should be decided based on a comparison of each candidate's merits, not on a strategy of misinformation based on the M-word.

The writer is a Gannett News Service columnist.
 


For Immediate Release                                                                                                Contact: Alison Omens 202-637-5018

 

Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

On the July Jobs Report

August 1, 2008

 

The Bush economy has made 2008 a tough year for working people - - and we’re just over half the way done. In total, we have lost 463,000 jobs since the year began, this month adding another 51,000.  As working families will be the first to tell you, the job market is deteriorating rapidly and things are expected to get worse before they get better.

 

Everyone’s struggling these days to squeeze by. And there’s a reason the recession is hitting working people particularly hard. Wages haven’t recovered from the last recession, meaning that working people are starting off with less to lose. In fact, we’re on top of a generation-long stagnation of wages and rising financial insecurity.

 

The president and Congress must act now to help working people. We need further urgent action to keep more families from losing their homes.  We must work to pass a second stimulus program which includes fiscal relief to state and cities and extended unemployment benefits, as well as funding for food stamps and ready-to-go construction to repair schools, roads and bridges -- construction that will to help create good, family-supporting jobs.

 

But immediate assistance is not enough. It’s past time to deal with the longer term, structural imbalances behind the current crisis.  We must rebuild America’s manufacturing capacity and restore our nation’s competitiveness.  We must reform our financial institutions to ensure the integrity of our capital markets.  And, most importantly, we must enact the Employee Free Choice Act to ensure a fair process that gives workers the freedom to bargain for better wages and benefits and rebalance power between labor and management.  America’s workers are the most productive in the world and should share in the benefit of their work.

 

Republicans in Congress, Pres. Bush, and Sen. McCain have hemmed and hawed their way through any kind of relief. Working class voters will look closely at who’s for good jobs and an economy that works for all - - and who has worked to block them.

 

###

 


 

The Slump Worsens

 

EPI News
AUGUST 1, 2008

 
More bad news on jobs, growth
This week, the long string of bad economic news continued. On Friday, the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a rise in the unemployment rate to 5.7%, the highest in four years. In their Jobs Picture analysis, EPI economists Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz noted that the buying power of weekly paychecks is dropping sharply, more part-timers want full-time work, and the unemployment rate of African American adult men jumped to 10%. "The persistence of job and real wage losses provides a very strong rationale for a second stimulus package," said Bernstein. A day earlier, numbers from the Commerce Department showed anemic growth in the gross domestic product--insufficient to keep the jobless rate from growing even worse, as EPI economist L. Josh Bivens wrote in the GDP Picture.

U.S. - China trade gap: Massive job losses for U.S. workers
Unbalanced U.S. trade with China since 2001 has had a devastating effect on U.S. workers. This week's Economic Snapshot revealed that between 2001 and 2007, the trade deficit caused the loss or displacement of 2.3 million jobs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, including 366,000 last year. EPI economist Rob Scott explains the issue in more depth in a new briefing paper, The China Trade Toll, which detailed the devastating impact that the growing U.S. trade deficit with China is having on American jobs, wages, and key industries. (Press release
[PDF])

Comparing health care proposals
A new EPI Policy Memo distilled the implications of health care plans by Senators Obama and McCain, based on research findings from the Tax Policy Center. The memo, with a series of graphs, spells out each plan's outcomes regarding cost, coverage, and efficiency.

The Mission of EPI
To inform and empower people to seek solutions that will ensure broadly shared prosperity and opportunity.

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Economic Harmony on the Left
 

by Harold Meyerson--Washington Post
Wednesday, July 30, 2008; A15

If there's one thing to which the world of Democratic economics is utterly unaccustomed, it's agreement. Democrats fight with each other all the time on trade. They disagree about whether to push for balanced budgets or increased spending. Some emphasize growth; others call for greater distributional fairness.

So the big news from Barack Obama <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Barack+Obama?tid=informline>'s meeting Monday with 20 economic advisers is that there was far more agreement than disagreement about how to fix the nation's deepest fiscal ailments.

Given the range of perspectives and interests represented, such concord was remarkable. The advisers ran the gamut from Clinton administration centrists, such as former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Robert+Rubin?tid=informline> and Larry Summers <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Lawrence+Summers?tid=informline>; to former George W. Bush <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/George+W.+Bush?tid=informline> administration Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Paul+O%27Neill?tid=informline> and SEC chairman William Donaldson, both presumably still Republicans; to such avowed liberals as former labor secretary (and my American Prospect colleague) Robert Reich <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Robert+Reich?tid=informline>, economist Jared Bernstein <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Jared+Bernstein?tid=informline>, and labor leaders John Sweeney <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/John+Sweeney?tid=informline> (president of the AFL-CIO <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/AFL-CIO?tid=informline>) and Anna Burger (chair of Change to Win). Also there, for good measure, were former Fed <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/U.S.+Federal+Reserve?tid=informline> chief Paul Volcker <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Paul+Volcker?tid=informline> and everyone's favorite mega-rich guy, Warren Buffett <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Warren+Buffett?tid=informline>.

"There was no dissent over whether there should be a stimulus," says Bernstein, "just over whether it should be $50 billion or a lot bigger. There's real consensus that the economy has structural problems, ranging from people like Reich and me to CEOs who look at the markets and say we really need better rules."

That doesn't mean that differing views weren't voiced in the meeting or that the party has reached a consensus on trade. But, adds Bernstein, Obama is "more of an 'and' guy than an 'or' guy. He's for growth and fairness."

One way to square that circle is to boost spending on repairing America's rickety infrastructure, an idea that has captured both the center and the left of the political and economic spectrums. Several participants recommended infrastructure projects as one way to help restore consumer confidence and boost the stagnating incomes of American families. "People need to be confident that the next president will help create jobs that will actually enable families to keep up with rising prices," says Sweeney.

During the first year of Bill Clinton <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Bill+Clinton?tid=informline>'s presidency, two of those present Monday, Rubin and Reich, had dueled over which policy Clinton should emphasize more: reducing the deficit (Rubin's position) or increasing public infrastructure investment (Reich's). It was Rubin who prevailed then. But concern about underinvestment in America has risen since 1993. While some of Monday's participants "were concerned about the deficit issue," Sweeney adds, "there was significant support for a policy that would help create good jobs, green jobs, infrastructure jobs."

Some of the issues that have long divided key elements of the Democratic coalition are receding as America's economic landscape is reshaped. Nothing illustrates this change more clearly than the announcement by Teamsters President James P. Hoffa last week that his union would no longer support drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Arctic+National+Wildlife+Refuge?tid=informline>. The Teamsters had been a mainstay of the pro-drilling ANWR coalition and in the 2004 Democratic primaries attacked John Kerry <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/John+Kerry?tid=informline> for leading the opposition to drilling. But that was then.

"The times have changed," Hoffa told me yesterday. "We have to have a new energy policy; we can't drill our way out of this. We have to wean ourselves away from fossil fuels and explore such alternative sources as wind, water and solar."

Considering that Hoffa represents hundreds of thousands of people who drive for a living, the Teamsters' turn away from drilling may seem startling. But Hoffa clearly believes that the upward pressure on oil prices, both real and manipulated, won't be significantly reduced by more coastal or Alaskan drilling. Also, his union is engaged in a long-running organizing campaign of port truck drivers that is inextricably linked to environmentalists' efforts to clean up the toxic air that envelops many of America's harbors. In league with the enviros, the Teamsters support upgrading and greening the harbor truck fleets, a move they believe would force a restructuring of the industry and enable drivers (who are, currently, poorly paid independent contractors) to work for major trucking companies and be organized into a union. Lastly, the Teamsters' shift squares their position with Obama's.

For all these reasons, the Teamsters and turtles are together today as they have not been since the 1999 anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle. In a party now headed by an "and" guy, not an "or" guy, this comes as very welcome news.

/meyersonh@washpost.com <mailto:meyersonh@washpost.com>/

 


CEPR logo


Offshore Drilling Won't Help But "Green Stimulus" Can

 

By Mark Weisbrot 


This op-ed was distributed by McClatchy Tribune Information Services on July 30, 2008, and published in The News and Observer (NC) and other newspapers. If anyone wants to reprint it, please let CEPR know, by replying to this message.


"Gas prices - $4, $5, no end in sight, because some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America," says the narrator in the TV ad that Republican presidential candidate John McCain played last week.

"Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?"

Cut to crowd, chanting: "Obama, Obama."

Yes, this is a real political ad on TV, complete with "I'm John McCain and I approve this message." It is not The Onion.

Reality check:  First, Senator McCain's proposal to "drill more in America and rescue our family budgets" - that is, to open up environmentally sensitive offshore areas to oil drilling - would take about a decade to produce any oil. That's according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Maybe by "family budgets" McCain meant rescuing families in 2018. Or maybe not. According to the EIA, the total amount of oil that this drilling would produce at peak 20 years from now would be less than 0.2 percent of world production. This would be too small to have any significant effect on the price of oil or gasoline, according to the EIA.

Last Sunday, on the ABC morning talk show "This Week," Senator McCain again mentioned "offshore drilling" as part of a plan to reduce dependence on foreign oil. He got away with it, since the host didn't ask him how such a tiny amount of oil would have any significant effect on imports. He included a number of other things, too, but did not mention mileage standards for cars, mass transit, or conservation generally.

Fuel efficiency standards for passenger vehicles in the United States have barely changed since 1985. If we had chosen to raise these standards (for cars and light trucks) by less than one half mile (0.4 miles) per year, the average car on the road would be getting 32 miles per gallon. This would reduce our oil consumption by 3.3 million barrels per day, or more than 16 times what McCain's offshore drilling would get us twenty years from now.

Mass transit could also be greatly expanded, as today's gasoline prices have made people more than ready to use it. This would not only save a lot more oil imports than offshore drilling, it would also provide jobs and an economic stimulus at a time when it is badly needed. The U.S. economic downturn is just beginning: we built up an $8 trillion housing bubble during the decade from 1996-2006, and only about 60 percent of it has burst so far. At the current rate of house price declines, another $2 trillion in housing wealth will disappear this year. Consumer spending, which is 70 percent of the economy, is likely to decline and the labor market will continue to weaken. The prior stimulus package passed in February has given some boost to the economy for the first half of this year, but much more will be needed.

A "green stimulus" package would give the economy a lift while simultaneously reducing energy consumption. This would include not only mass transit but also tax credits for homeowners and businesses to make building improvements that conserve energy. These would include renovations such as solar panels and insulation. Sizeable tax credits in this area would also help the ailing construction industry, an important part of our economy that has collapsed with the housing bubble.

All of these measures make a lot more sense than drilling for very little oil in environmentally sensitive areas, while trying to blame Barack Obama for rising gasoline prices.

 

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net).

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Dean Baker on the Bush/McCain Tax Cuts for the Rich and the Housing Meltdown

A Tax Plan By Any Other Name

The Bush years prove that John McCain's plan to cut taxes on the wealthy won't promote economic growth.
By Dean Baker

President Bush has the worst record on job growth of any president since Herbert Hoover. The typical worker has seen her wages decline over the eight years of the Bush presidency, and she has seen none of the benefits of the period's productivity growth. In addition, tens of millions of homeowners are seeing the bulk of their wealth disappear in the housing crash.

This is the record senator John McCain has embraced by making Bush's tax cuts the centrepiece of his economic agenda. Choosing an economic policy that has been a proven failure is a bold and risky strategy in a presidential campaign, but McCain is betting that the media will be so incompetent that they will not notice. He may be right.

For example, last week National Public Radio (NPR) did a report on the tax cut proposals of McCain and senator Barack Obama. The report correctly told listeners that the McCain's proposals will give more money to the wealthy, while Obama's would give more money to the middle class.

However, after presenting a solid analysis of the distributional impact of the tax cut proposals, NPR decided to tell its listeners about the "big ideas" behind these two proposals. We were told that the big idea behind the Obama plan was "fairness", which could also be called "redistribution".

It was nice for NPR to tell its listeners what pejorative term can be used to describe the tax cut. I suppose it can also be called "socialism", "communism" or "Arthur", but NPR was good enough to stop at redistribution.

However, the reporting really got outrageous when NPR told us that the big idea behind the McCain plan was "growth". We could perhaps have an interesting debate about whether giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the country is a good way to promote growth, if we didn't already know the answer. We have had almost eight years of Bush tax cuts, and the record is as clear as it could possibly be. When it comes to producing economic growth that benefits the middle class, the tax cuts were dismal failures.

The economy is now in the process of sinking into the second recession of the Bush administration. At the current rate of job loss, it is entirely possible that Bush will have created fewer private sector jobs in his entire eight years in office than the 2.6 million jobs the Clinton administration created annually.

The average worker's wage will almost certainly be lower when Bush leaves office in January of 2009 than when he took office in January of 2001. This means that most workers will have seen nothing from the benefits of productivity growth over the last eight years.

Certainly Bush cannot be blamed for everything that went wrong, but it does not make sense to claim that his policies bear no responsibility for this economic failure. Bush was left in charge of the store (he also controlled both houses of Congress through most of his presidency), and we got cleaned out. Imagine if some big government Democrat had this track record.

This is why it is absurd for McCain to present himself as the candidate of jobs and growth. We are doing his policies now - and they don't work.

McCain should be embarrassed to push these policies given the huge failure sitting in front of our faces, but he is counting on the media to turn the issue into a he said/she said. McCain is betting that the media will treat the failure of the Bush-McCain economic policy as a matter of partisan contention, rather than as a fact, like gravity.

Thus far he has been right. He did a test run of media gullibility a couple of weeks ago when he proposed drilling for oil offshore in environmentally sensitive areas. He proposed this as a response to $4-a-gallon gas. This was McCain's way of showing that he cares for the working stiff.

Of course, McCain knows that the amount of oil potentially available offshore in environmentally sensitive areas is too small to have a noticeable impact on prices and that it will take a decade before we even see a drop. But, he wanted the media frame of being the guy who was willing to sacrifice the environment in order to help Joe Sixpack.

It worked like a charm. The media contrasted Obama's concern with the environment (portrayed as out of touch and elitist) with McCain's concern for jobs and growth.

If McCain could look good proposing a policy that jeopardises the environment for no visible economic benefit, why not push an economic policy that is a proven failure, as though the past eight years never happened? As P.T. Barnum should have said: "No one ever lost an election underestimating the gullibility of the US media."

- This article was published on July 14, 2008 by The Guardian Unlimited.

 

The Meltdown Lowdown (No. 13)

This week in economic news: McCain advocates balancing the budget with magic, Greenspan is either a liar or a fool, and government lenders sag under the weight of bad mortgages.
 
    
By Dean Baker

McCain Comes Out for a Balanced Budget (With Tax Cuts)

John McCain would like to claim the legacy of the last popular Republican president, Ronald Reagan. He took a big step toward that goal on Monday when he explained his plans to balance the budget by 2013. Just like Reagan, Sen. McCain claims he can cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget. For his next trick, he will juggle 27 flaming bowling balls, while standing on one foot on the back of a charging bull, blindfolded.

Those keeping score will remember that the deficit exploded in the Reagan years. It was 2.6 percent of gross domestic product in the last Carter budget but exploded to 6 percent of GDP -- the largest deficit of the post-World War II era -- by 1983. The debt to GDP ratio rose from 32.6 percent at the end of 1981 to 53.1 percent after the last Reagan budget in 1989. Prior to Reagan, the debt to GDP ratio had been falling consistently since World War II under both Democratic and Republican presidents.

If McCain thinks that promising tax cuts, higher defense spending, and a balanced budget is "straight talk," what would he consider lying?


What If They Are Telling the Truth?

When a high-powered official makes some really harebrained statement about the economy, I always assume that it is for political purposes and that he or she really knows what's going on.

For example, Alan Greenspan told The Washington Post recently that he first became aware of the explosion in sub-prime mortgage debt in January of 2006, his last month as Fed chairman. But the growth in sub-prime lending was not a trade secret -- by 2006 it was a widely noted development among people following the housing market and the economy.

In the same vein, Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, complained last week about the weak dollar at the same time he defended the European Central Bank's (ECB) recent interest-rate hike.

Presumably, one of the main reasons that the ECB raised interest rates was to strengthen the euro (and thereby weaken the dollar) in an effort to fight inflation. The higher value of the euro against the dollar and other currencies makes U.S. goods cheaper in Europe, causing Europeans to buy more imports and fewer domestically produced goods. (Cheaper imports also lower prices more generally in the euro zone, another way to reduce inflationary pressure.) The lower dollar also raises the price of European exports, causing people in the United States to buy fewer of them. Higher imports and lower exports will have the effect of slowing growth in the European economies, thereby throwing workers out of work and decreasing their bargaining power, which is how central banks fight inflation.

Therefore, it doesn't make sense to both support the rate hike by the ECB and complain about a weak dollar, although the higher interest rate also slows the European economy through other mechanisms. If Barroso didn't want a weak dollar, then he should be opposed to the rate hike.

Anyhow, when prominent figures like Greenspan and Mr. Barroso make statements that really don't make any sense, I have always assumed that they were doing it out of some political calculation. But what if these people are actually being honest and really don't have a clue? Let's hope they are just liars.


Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Are Going Down. Who Could Have Known?

The stocks of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both fell by more than 15 percent on Monday. These giant companies were established by the federal government to facilitate homeownership through the creation of a secondary mortgage market. The secondary mortgage market allowed the banks or savings and loans that made mortgages to resell them, which meant that they could get more capital to issue new mortgages. This effectively transformed mortgage markets from local to national or international markets. In the last quarter, Fannie and Freddie, along with the Federal Housing Authority and the Department of Veterans Affairs, either issued or backed 80 percent of new mortgages. Essentially, as the private mortgage-financing system collapsed, the quasi-public system has risen to fill the gap.

However, Fannie and Freddie could not possibly have remained immune to the tidal wave of bad mortgage debt coming in the wake of the housing collapse. The only real question was when the size of their losses would become clear to the financial markets and analysts and impair their ability to finance new mortgages.

It now seems as though that time has come. The precipitating factor may have been a report from a research firm warning that a major mortgage insurer, with whom Freddie Mac had substantial dealings, may see its credit downgraded. This would leave Freddie Mac more exposed to losses on bad mortgages. The prospect of this downgrading, combined with negative reports from Lehman brothers and other analysts, sent their stocks plummeting.


CBO Projects Housing-Bailout Program Will Send 140,000 Families Into Second Foreclosure

It's amazing what you can find reading obscure documents from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO's analysis of the Dodd-Frank housing-bailout package projects that 35 percent of the 400,000 homeowners (140,000) who get a new mortgage through the program will still eventually be unable to pay their bills and will lose their homes in foreclosure.

These families can look forward to two or three more years of struggling to pay their mortgages, sacrificing health care, child care, and other necessary expenses in order to hang on to their home. At the end of the day, these 140,000 families will end up out on the street with nothing.

This is what D.C. policy wonks call "asset building."


Can NPR Get Serious on Global Warming?

NPR reported Monday on efforts at the G-8 summit to reach an agreement on global warming. It reported without comment President Bush's insistence that the U.S. will not agree to restrict its emissions until China and India also sign on.

If NPR had a real reporter deal with this topic, she would have told listeners that China's and India's emissions of greenhouse gases are less than one-fourth as much per person as U.S. emissions. No leader of these countries would ever agree to a treaty that permanently committed them to a much lower level of emissions than the U.S. and Europe. (What would be the rationale -- do they have the wrong skin color or are they being punished for not having done more to pollute the planet in the past?)

Without this context, many NPR listeners might actually think that President Bush was trying to arrange a serious agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

-- This article was published on July 10, 2008 by TAP (The American Prospect) Online.


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Three Women Elected to Top Three Officer Positions at American Federation of Teachers

July 14, 2008

Contact: Steve Smith 202-637-5018 

 

Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

on the Election of Three New Top Officers at the American Federation of Teachers

 

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) today elected three outstanding new top leaders -- Randi Weingarten as president, Antonia Cortese as secretary-treasurer and Lorretta Johnson as executive vice president.  All three have repeatedly shown their passion, commitment and success in improving the lives of working families. The election of three women to the top offices of this great union is a new milestone and an important step for the labor movement.

 

From her early days as a social studies teacher to her recent success in leading the United Federation of Teachers, Randi has shown herself to be a strong advocate for teachers, students and workers from many professions.  Her impressive record in support of working families leaves no doubt that Randi will be a champion for the working women and men of the AFT – and beyond.

 

Antonia Cortese has served the past four years as AFT executive vice president and Lorretta Johnson, president of AFT-Maryland, currently serves as president of the Baltimore Teachers Union’s paraprofessional chapter. 

 

AFT President Edward McElroy and Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour, who have retired from their positions, have inspired us all and left an indelible mark on the American labor movement. Their unselfish concern for their members and working people everywhere was the hallmark of their tenure.  We know their advocacy on behalf of working families will not end with retirements.
 


 

McCain Pledges Allegiance to NAFTA
Bob Borsage, Campaign for America's Future
July 1, 2008


John McCain continues his rousing campaign tour of the swing states of NAFTA this week. He will celebrate July 3rd in Mexico City after a jaunt through Colombia to pledge support for the pending free trade accord with that center of cocaine trade. He surely will increase his margin over Obama among business elites in Mexico and Canada. Obama will travel to Zanesville, Ohio, once more exposing himself to McCain's jibes about embracing "protectionist" policies.

No, this isn't a joke. McCain is stumping Colombia today and Mexico tomorrow, a week after his visit to Ottawa, championing NAFTA to business elites in those countries.

McCain's has a pat routine for these junkets. He piously intones homilies on the benefits of free trade: "We need stand up for free trade with no ifs, ands or buts about it. We let trade and globalization be politicized at our own peril." He repeats a sanctimonious pledge never to "dishonor" America by even contemplating any deviation from the "sacred" NAFTA treaty. He issues stern condemnations of the dangers of "mindless protectionism." And expresses his fervent faith in the ability of American workers to compete with anyone anywhere.

You can't teach old dog new tricks, goes the old saw. And with McCain, it seems ever more obvious that you can't trust an old salt on a new ocean. He simply doesn't get it. For years, the trade debate featured the mantra he repeats above. Trade, by definition, benefited America. Sure, a few privileged union workers might lose their cushy jobs and padded salaries, but they would find new jobs in the expanding global economy. Americans would prosper from investments abroad, our financial services industry would capture the high end of the expanded world economy; we'd sustain our manufacturing edge by becoming more productive; we'd benefit from lower priced goods imported from abroad. The earth was flat, Tom Friedman taught us, and we're all the better for it.

Except it hasn't quite worked out like that. Productivity went up, but wages stagnated at best and insecurity increased. Corporations clubbed workers with the threat of moving abroad, and cut back on salaries, job security, and benefits like health care and pensions. Families went ever deeper into debt as the cost of basics -- education, health care, retirement security, and now food and gas -- soared. More and more workers lost good jobs, only to be forced into those that paid less with fewer benefits. And now with the global workforce effectively doubled as China and India and the former Soviet Union joined the global maw, it isn't just industrial workers at risk, but some 30 million jobs that could face off-shoring, according to sober free trade advocates like Alan Blinder. Financial services did prosper, until their greed and gambling blew up in the housing bubble.

The US went further and further into global debt, running up trade deficits that are still $2 billion a day despite the decline in the dollar. Last month, the Chinese announced they were netting $2.5 billion a month -- $100 million an hour -- in foreign exchange. Their sovereign investment funds are now hunting for good deals across the world.

NAFTA, sold as a source of jobs for the US and a solution to the immigration flows from Mexico, hasn't worked that way either. Our trade deficit with Mexico has soared from a basic balance before NAFTA to an all-time high of $74.3 billion last year. Mexico now exports more cars to the United States than the US exports to the world. Immigration tensions grew as small farmers got displaced in Mexico by subsidized US food exports, and started coming North in large numbers.

Elites found ways to protect themselves. Lawyers, doctors, prescription drug companies use licensing and patent laws to protect their wages and profits, but most Americans worry about how their kids were going to sustain a middle class life style. Globalization isn't the only reason the middle class is declining -- the war on labor, the worship of the CEO and other factors contribute -- but it certainly is a significant part of the reason.

And across the world, developing countries discovered the NAFTA model didn't work for them either. The countries that have enjoyed success -- the Asian tigers, China -- play by a very different set of rules. They target industries, and pursue aggressive mercantilist policies to capture export markets. They run up large foreign reserves to be able to protect their currencies from global speculators. China's bosses have been happy to lend us the money to keep buying the goods our companies were making over there -- and will manipulate the value of their currency until they capture the markets they are seeking. But it is hard to argue, as McCain does, that free trade is spreading democracy across the world when the most successful economy is a communist dictatorship.

Now even champions of free trade like former Treasury Secretaries Bob Rubin and Larry Summers admit this hasn't quite worked out as they hoped. Across the world, the revolt against the corporate trade model is growing. In the US, a majority -- 58% -- of those polled in a January 2008 Wall Street Journal/NBC survey agreed that "globalization has been bad... because it has subjected US companies and employees to unfair competition and cheap labor."

We face not a choice between "free trade" and "isolationism," as McCain claims, but the challenge of developing a serious strategy for sustaining a robust middle class in a global economy. It isn't a choice between keeping our word and "dishonoring" our commitments, but making a clear reassessment of how we get out of the hole we are in.

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio was elected to office in 2006 in a campaign focused on opposition to the trade treaties that have devastated manufacturing jobs in that state. He now has joined with other Senators, unions, family farm groups, religious and public interest groups to put forth the TRADE Act. The act calls for a halt on all new trade accords until the US Comptroller General undertakes a comprehensive assessment of the benefits and the costs of our current agreements, looking at who has benefited -- here and abroad -- and who has suffered. The Act then calls for developing a strategy that insures that the benefits of trade are widely shared, that we pursue a policy designed to benefit working people and Main Street, and not simply Wall Street. Barack Obama has laid out elements of an alternative strategy that may form the basis of a new course.

McCain's response to this is like an Inquisition priest discovering free thinking in the pews. Doctrine is sacrosanct. Questioning it is dishonorable. He calls upon Americans to sustain the course we have been on, like lemmings marching stolidly to the sea.

He pretends this is an American tradition, claiming that "every time the United States has become protectionist... we've paid a very heavy price" But this ignores the entire history of this country's rise -- with sharp eyed mercantilist trade policies behind tariff walls -- to a world economic power with a broad middle class. "Yankee traders" were famed for cutting a tough, practical deal, not for sacrificing their interests for ideological principles.

Nor is McCain such an innocent. He says we mustn't "politicize" trade accords, but trade accords are already heavily politicized. Every trade agreement -- particularly NAFTA -- features fierce lobbying over every clause. McCain knows this because his entire campaign is staffed from top to bottom by corporate lobbyists, many of whom have earned a hefty buck lobbying to influence and pass trade accords. If McCain is elected, their clients know that they are in line to be first to the trough.

Saint John doesn't sully his rhetoric with these unseemly realities. He seems to want to make trade policy a centerpiece of his election campaign, and doing so will surely help him raise some dough. Barack Obama should take him up on it. Let McCain stump the business elites of Mexico City, Bogota and Ottawa. Obama can join Sherrod Brown championing the concerns of working people in Zanesville and Flint and Pittsburgh. Let voters decide which candidate has his priorities right.

Lori Wallach
Director, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
+1 (202)546-4996  /  fax +1 (202)547-7369
http://www.tradewatch.org

Visit our blog http://www.eyesontrade.org

 


 

Wal-Mart Guilty

 

State Court Rules Wal-Mart Repeatedly Violated Minnesota Wage and Hour Laws

Bureau  of Nation Affairs: News

7/10/08

ST. PAUL, Minn.--Wal-Mart Stores Inc. must pay more than $6.5 million in compensatory damages to a class of workers in Minnesota who alleged that the company repeatedly violated the state's labor laws by requiring them to work off the clock during training and by failing to provide them full rest and meal breaks, a state court judge ruled June 30 (Braun v. Wal-Mart Inc., Minn. Dist. Ct., No. 19-CO-01-9790, 6/30/08).

The 151-page ruling issued by Dakota County District Court Judge Robert R. King Jr. found that the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer violated various state laws millions of times over the six-year period covered by the lawsuit.

A second trial to determine if the company must pay civil penalties and punitive damages is scheduled for Oct. 20. An attorney for the plaintiffs said Wal-Mart also could be forced to pay attorneys' fees and costs. That issue is unlikely to be resolved before the end of this year, he said.

Daphne Moore, spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, said the company is considering an appeal. She said it is Wal-Mart policy to pay every worker for every hour worked and provide them both rest and meal breaks.


Class Includes 56,000 Workers


The class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart was filed in the fall of 2001, with four named plaintiffs alleging that the company had violated Minnesota's labor laws by requiring hourly workers to work off the clock during training. The class, which eventually included 56,000 current and former workers who had been employed by Wal-Mart between Sept. 11, 1998, and Jan. 31, 2004, also alleged that they had been required to work through all or part of their rest and meal breaks.

According to the court's findings of fact, Wal-Mart's Store Total Activity Review (STAR) audits indicated that store associates were missing their breaks. A November 2003 STAR audit showed that every Minnesota store audited scored "unsatisfactory" in the portion of the audit dealing with rest and meal break compliance.

The court found that although Wal-Mart argued that the audits were methodologically unsound, common sense indicated that if the company felt the audits were flawed, it would not have continued to use them.

The court added that Wal-Mart stopped recording rest break "swipes"--akin to punching in or out on a time clock--in early 2001. By not recording when employees were taking their breaks, the court wrote, Wal-Mart no longer had a systematic method for determining whether employees were receiving their rest breaks. It added that the action diminished Wal-Mart's ability to monitor and enforce break compliance.

The court found that deciding not to record employee swipes could be construed as evidence of missed breaks.

It found that Wal-Mart's payroll pressures could have affected employee breaks. The court observed that the company discourages overtime and seeks to have store payrolls account for smaller and smaller percentages of their budgets. By doing so, the court said, it could affect store managers' ability or desire to adequately staff their stores. Smaller staffs, the court wrote, could lead to reduced compliance with rest and meal break requirements.


Over 2 Million Violations, Attorney Says


Justin H. Perl of Maslon, Edelman, Borman & Brand of Minneapolis, attorneys for the class, said the court found more than 2 million violations of Minnesota labor laws, including failing to provide breaks, failing to maintain proper work records, requiring workers to work off the clock, and failing to pay for breaks up to 20 minutes. Each of the violations could carry a civil penalty of up to $1,000, he said. How much the company should be penalized will be determined at the second trial, he said.

Perl added that the second trial also would determine punitive damages. He said while the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that punitive damages could be limited to a one-to-one ratio with compensatory damages, he did not believe that ratio would apply to the Wal-Mart case.

Perl said punitive damages can be higher when a company's actions are difficult to detail or when the compensatory damages awarded are not terribly large. He said the award of $6.5 million for 56,000 plaintiffs is not a terribly large verdict.

Moore said Wal-Mart is considering an appeal. She said the company continues to disagree with the court's granting class-action status, believing that the experiences of a handful of workers cannot translate into the experiences of thousands of workers. Furthermore, she said, more witnesses testified on Wal-Mart's behalf that it properly paid it workers and that properly provided them rest and meal breaks.

Jonathan Parritz, Kai Richter, Andre LaMere, and Jennifer Benowitz, also of Maslon Edelman, represented the plaintiffs, as did William Sieben of Schwebel Goetz & Sieben in Minneapolis, and Rodney Bridgers and Nathan Axvig of Franklin Azar & Associates. Wal-Mart was represented by Neal Manne, Victoria Cook, Shawn Rabin, David Orozco, and Kalpana Srinivasan of Susman Godfrey in Houston, Dallas, and Los Angeles; Jerry Blackwell of Blackwell Burke in Minneapolis; and James Kremer of Dorsey & Whitney in Minneapolis.

Text of the decision may be accessed at http://op.bna.com/dlrcases.nsf/r?Open=vros-7g5qzc. End of article graphic
 


 

Congress Votes to Extend Unemployment Benefits

Below is a statement issued by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid after the vote (June 27, 2008):

SENATE PASSES PRESSING DOMESTIC NEEDS INCLUDING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS AND DISASTER RELIEF

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the following statement today after the U.S. Senate passed important domestic priorities in the Supplemental Appropriations bill:

With millions of Americans suffering from a Bush economy that has shed jobs every month of 2008, Democrats have extended unemployment insurance to immediately provide up to 13 additional weeks of benefits in every state. Extending this insurance is one of the most cost-effective and fast-acting ways to stimulate the economy because the money is spent quickly.

We are also providing $2.65 billion to secure critical resources for Americans suffering from disasters in the wake of tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest, and nearly $6 billion to strengthen New Orleans levees weakened in Hurricane Katrina. Among many other important provisions, we are protecting seniors, families and those disabilities from Medicaid cuts; nearly doubling the President's request for military construction and veterans hospitals; and more than doubling the President's request for international aid. I hope that President Bush recognizes that our needs at home deserve at least the same attention as those we pay for abroad.

 


 

Our Great Economic U‑Turn

Wall Street Journal
By THOMAS FRANK
May 14, 2008


Twenty years ago, when I started out as a writer, the problems of mass prosperity were the ones that intrigued me most. America was then, as I thought it would always remain, the great middle‑class nation. And in the permanent affluent society, questions of taste and waste and marketing and alienation were what really mattered, now and forever. When moved to consider workplace issues in those days, I instinctively placed them in the category of brutal‑things‑settled‑long‑ago: Without even thinking about it, I connected the word "labor" to the word "history."

It's not a mistake anyone can make any longer, whether they are pondering the voting patterns of working‑class Hoosiers or the driest statistics in the record book. Median "nonelderly" household income, we find, fell consistently through the first half of this decade, despite the solid economic growth enjoyed by the country as a whole.

Some nonmedian folks did just fine, of course: The top 20% of households earned more, after taxes, than the rest of the country combined in 2005, while the topmost 1% of the population took home more than the bottom 40%. The top‑earning hedge fund manager of 2007, in fact, made about as much last year in nominal dollars ($3.7 billion) as J. Paul Getty, one of the richest men in the world, was worth in the mid‑1970s.

Real hourly wages for most workers, on the other hand, have risen only 1% since 1979, even as those workers' productivity has increased by 60%. What's more, American workers now clock more hours per year than their counterparts in virtually every other advanced economy, even Japan. And unless you haven't read a newspaper for 15 years, you already know what's happened to workers' health insurance and pension plans.

I confess that I am fascinated by the mechanics of this huge social reconfiguration ‑ in the same sense that I am fascinated by the industrial procedures of a slaughterhouse, or by the strategies that enabled small Confederate armies to win victories for slavery over much larger Union forces. How the big change was brought off is the subject of Steven Greenhouse's important new book, "The Big Squeeze," which is also my source for many of the statistics in the preceding paragraphs. Aside from the outsourcing, offshoring, and firing‑at‑will that make up the best‑known weapons in the corporate arsenal, Mr. Greenhouse reveals how managers extract unpaid work through an array of ingenious tricks, from eliminating bathroom breaks to electronically erasing hours from workers' records.

The most extreme cases are described in a remarkable book by John Bowe called "Nobodies." Mr. Bowe's subject is "modern American slave labor," a term he uses without hyperbole, since his book tells how certain of our fellow Americans have actually forced others to work for them involuntarily. The trademark contrivance these bosses employ is debt bondage, the oldest management trick of them all. Their victims are generally migrant or "guest" workers, whose labor they have exploited from the tomato fields of Florida to the garment factories of Saipan.

The feeling I get from absorbing all these facts about the state of labor comes close to the nauseated dread that washes over me when I stay up late to read one of those what‑if stories in which Hitler wins World War II. Could this really have happened to my country?

It has not merely "happened"; it has been done to us. The distinction is an important one to keep in mind as we survey the ruins of the affluent society. What has overtaken America's working people is not a natural disaster like "globalization," and not even some kind of societal atavism in which countries regress mysteriously to their 19th‑century selves. This is a man‑made catastrophe, a result that proceeded directly from the deliberate beatdown of organized labor and the wrecking of the liberal state.

It is, in other words, a political disaster, with tax cuts, trade agreements, deregulatory measures, and enforcement decisions all finely crafted to benefit one part of society and leave the rest behind. Few of the voters who gave Ronald Reagan his landslide victories, it is fair to say, intended for this to be the outcome. They wanted their country to stand tall again, certainly; they wanted the scary regulators off their backs, maybe; but I can recall no conservative who trumpeted those long‑ago elections ‑ or any of the succeeding contests, for that matter ‑ as a referendum on plutocracy.

So let us have one now. Instead of pleasant talk about "change" and feats of beer drinking at the corner tavern, let us hear our candidates address this greatest issue of them all: What kind of country are we to be? A land of equality? Or a bankers' utopia ‑ where the law of the land has achieved mystical oneness with the higher law of classical economics, and devil take the bottom 80%.
 


 

American Negotiator on China Joining World Trade Organization: We Got it Wrong
Asia Times
by Robert Cassidy (Former principal United States negotiator for China accession to the WTO)


 

Failed Expectations in US Trade Policy



As the principal United States negotiator for the landmark market access agreement that led to China's accession to the World Trade Organization  (WTO), I have reflected on whether the agreements we negotiated really lived up to our expectations. A sober reflection has led me to conclude that those trade agreements did not.  

 

We failed to address the underlying fundamental market distortions that  skew the benefits toward the few while leaving the rest of the economy less well off. As global US financier George Soros, in a Bloomberg News interview on the financial crisis, recently said, "... the system, as it currently operates, is built on false premises." The premise on which our trade agreements are negotiated is at best flawed, if not broken The next administration has to take a hard look at the trade agreements currently on the table - especially with South Korea ‑ and ask: Who benefits? The answers should lead to a fundamental reassessment of what needs to be included in those trade agreements so that the benefits flow to broader and more equitable segments of the economy.
 

China's agreement to enter the WTO is a perfect example of failed expectations. To join the WTO, China made unilateral concessions to reduce and, in some cases, eliminate barriers to entry for US goods and
services. While no one claimed that the bilateral deficit would be reduced, claims were made that US exports of goods to China would increase, thus creating jobs in the higher‑paying export sector.
US exports to China have increased and, as the US Trade Representative often emphasizes, at a higher rate than to any other country. But such claims distort the real truth that exports grew faster because they grew from a very low level. In absolute terms, the increase in US exports of goods to the European Union was almost 70% greater than the increase in exports of goods to China and to Canada the increase was 40% more than to China. Neither of those trading partners made any trade concessions
to the United States during this period. Conversely, on the US import side, the United States made no concessions to China, yet US imports from China were more than triple the pre‑accession levels; to US$321 billion in 2007, almost matching imports from the entire European Union. In contrast, increases in imports from Canada, our largest trading partner, rose by $82 billion and imports from the EU increased by $134 billion.

Who benefits? The beneficiaries of the agreement with China fall into two groups: multinational companies that moved to China and the financial institutions that financed those investments, trade flows and deficits. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China accelerated at a time when such investment to other parts of Asia was declining and, in 2001, even matched FDI to the United States. Sourcing from China, whether from direct investment or through licensing arrangements, has allowed companies to cut costs and increase profits, as reflected in increased corporate profits and the surge in the US stock market.
 

Conversely, it is doubtful that the US economy or its workers are better off. US manufacturing jobs have declined by more than 2.5 million since China joined the WTO in 2001. While services jobs increased during this period, with the exception of telecommunications, non‑tradable jobs accounted for the most significant portion of that increase. Wages have been stagnant and real disposable income for three‑quarters of US households has been stable or declining. Only the top quartile of families has seen significant increases in real disposable income. The beneficiaries of these trade agreements try to divert attention by arguing that our trade in services has increased or that our competitiveness has declined. Those arguments are simply diversions because they don't explain why our exports of goods to countries that made no concessions increased more than our exports to China, which made significant tariff and non‑tariff concessions. Such arguments also fail to explain why our imports of goods from China increased more than our imports from other major trading partners. Is there any wonder that the people on Main Street think that trade agreements do not work? Were this simply a problem with our bilateral trade relationship with China, policy makers could focus on resolving that dysfunctional relationship. However, the problem extends to nearly all trade agreements since they are based on the flawed premise that free trade benefits the economy. The premise is flawed and broken since free trade does not exist in a "free market" petri dish where all other factors are neutral.

Using China as an example once again, proponents of the free trade model argue that China has a competitive advantage in wage rates that makes it ideal as the global manufacturing center that it has become. A closer examination, however, reveals that China has adopted an export‑led
development strategy, the centerpiece of which is a currency that is undervalued by 20‑80%, with the consensus leaning toward 40%. Thus China's wages, in US dollar terms, are 40% cheaper than they would have been if the currency were allowed to freely float. Similarly, foreign investors receive a 40% subsidy to develop operations in China. To add insult to injury, our exports are taxed at an additional
effective 40% rate.

 

While China has been appreciating its currency, it has a long way to go to bring it to equilibrium levels. In addition, China's internal barriers to trade not only restrict US exports but also restrict China's
market to Chinese producers, thus reducing the size of the domestic economy. It's no wonder that, until the last few months, our imports from China continued to accelerate, jobs continued to move overseas, and our exports to China consisted primarily of raw materials. The weakened US dollar has only recently had a positive impact on US imports. Europe, Canada, and other countries with freely floating exchange rates face comparable trends in their trade relationship with China. Similar arguments can be made for our "free‑trade" agreements (FTAs). For example, Canada fosters oligopolies, and in some provinces monopolies, that restrict both foreign trade and internal trade. Like China, South Korea, which recently concluded its FTA with the United States, has notoriously undervalued its currency, as automakers will attest. In addition, most countries have value‑added taxes that are rebated on their exports to the United States, while our exports receive no such treatment because our federal tax system relies on income and corporate taxes.

 

While these restrictive policies have little or no effect on our free trade agreements with many of the smaller economies, they do have a significant negative impact on our agreements with the larger economies. While focus has been placed on labor and environmental standards, until and unless we are able also to incorporate factors such as currency undervaluation and the lack of competition policy into our trade policy, the premise of "free trade" will fail to deliver its promises, whether delivered by Democrats, Republicans, or both. With the current financial and recessionary crisis, many "traditionalist" thinkers will likely pull out the old premises, arguing to conclude the Doha Round and pass legislation enacting recently signed free‑trade agreements as a means of alleviating the crisis.  Once again, multinational companies and financial institutions and their beneficiaries.
 

Before we blindly accept FTAs that will simply result in lost jobs, the next administration needs also to address comprehensively the disparities in international monetary and competition policies that
prevent our trade agreement from delivering the results that Main Street was promised and deserves.
Robert Cassidy is the former assistant US Trade Representative for Asia and for China and was the lead negotiator for China's 1999 Market Access Agreement that paved the way for China's accession to the World Trade Organization.


 


ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE

 

RESEARCH FOR BROADLY SHARED PROSPERITY

 

Snapshot

New from EPI:    Wednesday, June 18, 2008 

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Karen Conner
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Wages Surge for Topmost Sliver

 

As a scene from a summer movie, a chart showing the rapid rise of salaries for the nation’s highest paid wage earners would put Edward Norton’s dramatic transformation into the Incredible Hulk to shame. Today’s Snapshot by EPI president Lawrence Mishel illustrates the fast-growing gap between the nation’s highest earners – the top 1 percent and 0.1 percent – and the bottom 90 percent.  Just how fast is the gap growing? In 1979, it took the top 0.1 percent of earners roughly 12 ½ days of work to get paid what the average worker in the bottom 90 percent got for the whole year – but by 2004 that feat was accomplished in under four days. 

  

   About EPI

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Paul Ryan Drinks McCain Health Insurance Kool-Aid    

May 22, 2008 

Contact:  David Newby 

414-581-0942

 

 

            On May 21, Congressman Paul Ryan released his “Roadmap for America's Future", which includes a health insurance reform proposal just about identical to that proposed by Senator John McCain (is that a coincidence?).  If ever adopted, it would move us even further away from quality, affordable health care for everyone in America.

 

            Ryan starts by adopting McCain's proposal to count the value of any employer-provided health insurance as taxable income.  Most comprehensive family health insurance policies cost on average at least $10,000 a year.  So workers would have to pay taxes on this amount added to their regular wages.

 

            What do we get in return?  A tax credit or payment of $5000 for a family so you can buy your own insurance.  What a deal!  You pay more taxes and get a credit that pays at best half the cost of a good family health insurance policy.  This is health care reform?

 

            Ryan adds other measures as well:  the virtual elimination of state standards for health insurance policies, promotion of Health Savings Accounts (which means you pay high yearly deductibles with pre-tax income—if you have enough), and totally inadequate access for those with pre-existing conditions to get the health insurance they need in the private “market'.

 

            The Ryan-McCain approach to health care “reform” is topsy-turvy.  It does not improve the current unfair, unworkable, unsustainable health insurance industry.  Instead it attempts to subject even more people to the tyranny and capriciousness of insurance industry-provided health care.   It leaves us at the mercy of health insurance companies and their insatiable appetite for profit.  It presumes that quality of health care will improve, but leaves that to the magical workings of the “market”.

 

            “I suppose this is a good proposal if you want John McCain to choose you as his Vice Presidential running mate,” said David Newby, President of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.  “But if you want health care reform which guarantees that everyone will have affordable access to the quality health care they need, you'd better look elsewhere.  We don't need Ryan/McCain tinkering with our broken health care system:  we need broad reform which guarantees that everyone in America gets the health care they need, regardless of income or health status.”

        


Strike Threat Wins Aramark Contract

United and ready to fight, workers fought back concessions and won decent wage increases as part of a new contract for close to a hundred workers at Aramark's industrial laundry on Madison's far east side. "Delicious" was how UNITE HERE Local 229's president Rosie Reml described the gains in the new contract -- a $1,250 bonus in the first year, wage increases of 3 percent in the second year, and 2.5 percent increases in third year of the three-year deal. Union members approved the contact yesterday by a vote of 82-2.

 

In addition, Aramark will continue funding health care at current levels and begin contributing to a new pension plan. The company also agreed to write language guaranteeing "dignity and respect" for workers and their union into the contract.

 

"We are all very excited! When this started, Aramark looked like they wanted to bust the union," said Reml. "I can't believe we didn't have to give up a thi